Monthly Archive for April, 2006

: April, 2006

At the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention in Seattle today, Bill Gates and executives from The New York Times showed a prototype newspaper-reading program that displays text and images on the computer screen in much the same way as in a traditional paper. It’s based on the Windows Presentation Foundation technology to be included in Windows Vista. …

Here’s one measure of the severity of Microsoft’s stock-market tumble today: OAO Gazprom, a state-owned natural-gas company in Russia, surpassed the Redmond software giant as the world’s third-largest company by market value, according to Bloomberg News. …

Shares of Microsoft are down more than 10 percent in trading this morning, after the company gave lower-than-expected earnings guidance for its upcoming fiscal year and missed analysts’ estimates for its recent quarter. See coverage by The Associated Press. …

As part of its earnings report, Microsoft said it sold 1.7 million Xbox 360s during its third fiscal quarter. Adding to numbers previously reported, would bring the total to 3.2 million. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company is now expecting aggregate sales of 5 million to 5.5 million consoles by the end of the June, when the company’s fiscal year ends. That’s toward the high end of the 4.5 million to 5.5 million range previously provided by the company. …

Microsoft posted third-quarter revenue of $10.9 billion and earnings of 31 cents per share, coming in below analysts’ expectations on both measures. The company missed its own projections on the earnings per share figure. …

Andrew Tridgell, founder of the open-source Samba Project, testified against Microsoft today in Luxembourg, where the European Court of First Instance is holding a hearing this week on Microsoft’s appeal of the European Commission’s landmark 2004 antitrust ruling. Tridgell argued that Microsoft should be required to comply with the portion of the ruling that requires sharing technical information with rivals to help their server software work more smoothly with Windows. …

The next generation of video-game consoles will consist of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s … drum roll, please … Wii. Pronounced “we,” that’s the name the company announced this morning for the upcoming console previously known by the code name Revolution. Follow that link to see Nintendo’s explanation of the name’s meaning. What do you think? …

Microsoft isn’t commenting on reports that it plans to acquire Massive, the in-game advertising company. The Wall Street Journal broke the news this morning. Also see coverage by Reuters, Joystiq, and News.com. …

Data source: Microsoft (See spreadsheet.)Microsoft reports its financial results for the third quarter Thursday afternoon, but one of the most interesting parts will be what the company says about its future results. That’s because the third-quarter earnings release is typically when Microsoft gives the first forecast for its upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July. In this case, those numbers would reflect the company’s financial outlook for the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007, around the middle of the 2007 fiscal year. …

During a round-up of Hu Jintao’s U.S. visit on the current installment of NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” the quiz show’s host, Peter Sagal, refers to Hu’s Redmond stop — joking that China’s president “praised Microsoft for giving the Chinese government a lesson in how opaque totalitarian rule really works.” …